Roses in Bloom

They won't stay this giant and lovely for long, so I thought I'd share them on the blog. Valentine's Day is still showing its stuff! :)

Da-dat-dattle-dada-dat-dat-da-da!

My neighbor probably wouldn't like this photo of herself, looking for her husband to arrive at the circus :) She however, isn't on this blog, so she will mind less! She texted me a month or so ago and told me the local homeschool group was heading to the circus--for free!! She added our names to the list and off we went to our huge section. I had no idea there were so many homeschooling families in this neck of the woods--or how many we know! So funny to see the kids greet each other and then mix into various other families that they've gotten to know. By the end of the show, we had kids from four different families in our row and friends from choir (and the church we've started attending every other week :) scattered about nearby. Everybody knows everybody in this business, lol.

The guy in purple (with the cotton candy Mohawk) is a friend from church. His dad directs a ministry to the Deaf, so it was fun to see the kids try to communicate in ASL across a loud and crowded room with him. Obviously he just came over to chat eventually :)

Cotton candy! The boys did their poop patrol early, so had cash in hand to flag down the sellers of such sweet fluff! One of the little guys who sat with us belongs to our friends the K's. His mama sat next to me (with sweet baby D) and said, "Not too many treats for my boy." But my kids couldn't hear over the noise of the circus and so were kindly sharing away down the row. Finally we said, "No more for A!" which Brennen heard as, "Give the whole bag to A!" He was confused, but obeyed and then couldn't figure out why we looked frustrated, lol, poor kid! In the meantime, A's eyes were round as saucers and he was in cotton candy heaven! Our neighbor communicated with B from the row behind (I guess we haven't learned the sign for cotton candy yet ;). B retrieved his treat and A came down to ask his mom if they could "please have cotton candy again this year." She said, "No." Ha! Parenting is so funny sometimes :)

We may have gotten an abbreviated, *practice* version of the circus (I mean, it WAS free :), but this was a treat! When they announced the performing bears, we thought it would be dogs dressed in bear costumes. But nope. REAL bears! The one lady bear in the red tutu looked so embarrassed as she sat in her chair waiting for her turn to perform. By the way, no one was holding her leash! See how close those people are down there on the floor? It was also a show for the special needs community. Can you imagine how frightening it would be to have a bear on the loose? They must be mighty well trained bears! I mean, I guess they can ride bicycles :) Video to follow . . . We thought it was neat that there was a live orchestra in black tuxedos playing the music for all the acts. And the children were appropriately flabbergasted by the inappropriateness of some of the ladies' costumes. The bear gal, well, as my friend Glory said, "She needed to put on her pants!" I don't know though--if I were working with bears that big, I'd want nothing hindering my sprint if anything bear related went south ;)

The elephant show was also impressive! Usually, they just have them walk in a circle, pick people up and stuff, but these three laid down to take a nap, sat down in unison, and one even balanced all four feet on a shiny silver ball with a lady perched on its neck! We also watched tigers jump through flaming circles of fire (that was redundant . . .)

Look--it's like those back massage chains we used to do after volleyball practice :)

When the event concluded, we stopped by the box office to get our next set of entertainment tickets (fee free). One of the performers from the jump roping crew (which was way cooler than it sounds) ran over and gave G$ a high-five. G was stoked!

Like I said before, when we arrived home the old washer and dryer were gone (by the way, I looked up the song the new ones play--it's about trout fishing in Germany :).

Buck and the boys had one more stop to make--Buck picking up the early 40th birthday present he ordered himself at the gun show. Happy guy! Happy me--he's been dropping hints for nearly a year and when his officer buddy got one for Christmas and posted it on facebook, he might have teared up a little . . . hee hee . . . just teasing, honey ;)

So Excited!

I had to capture just a little of the boys' fun watching the bears do beary surprising things! :)

Throwing in the Towel

For the probably zillionth time--our dryer broke. No heat. Two loads left to go. Ugh! So, it's of course been in the plan to get a new pair, but I was hoping we'd have the money in the bank before we HAD to. Even the repairman emailed back, "You might want to think about just buying a new set of appliances." And we are good business for that fella! The crazy thing is that I sent the credit card and furniture card pay-offs from all of last year's broken goods literally the day before the dryer broke. This means we did not have the cash in the bank, but that the new washer/dryer go back on the furniture card. Hopefully, this will just be temporary til our tax return returns ;)

One thing I was bummed about was that all the cheap models (cheap in the most expensive sense of the word :) come in white. Boo! I want pretty if I have to do a zillion loads of laundry each week. I really like my blue ones (just not that they break all the time). So imagine my excitement when a pair of Samsungs (our Samsung fridge has held up great all these years, and so have our phones--well, sort of ;) in BLUE were marked down as a discontinued (last year's) model! We went ahead a got a three year protection plan for $100--normally we don't, but this is totally free repair, whether we are here, there, or anywhere else :)

Seriously--buying these new black-eyed beauties was way too easy . . . you just talk to the sales guy, he brings up your account number on his little tablet thingy, you digitally sign, and delivery happens--for free--the next day! I dig that next day thing; it meant I didn't have to miss a laundry day. In fact, those new two are singing (they play songs at the end of each cycle) away behind me as I type. Our only *worry* was that delivery was scheduled while we were scheduled to be at the circus. However, since it was a free show, and Buck had the day off, we decided he could stay home and wait for delivery and then just meet us later.

Well, to our whoop-whoop they called half an hour early and were delivered, set-up, old ones moved to the driveway (for scrapper pick up), while we ate lunch and left on time, together for the circus! What a deal!

By the time we returned from the *Greatest Show on Earth* the scrapper had already been by, saving us $30 in haul away fees. He's probably wondering what we'll toss next--he's taken our old pots and pans, our dishwasher (probably both of them), our basketball hoop, a grill, and now our washer and dryer; he may have taken the TV too. Our broken stuff is good business for him, so I'm glad someone is happy our stuff keeps breaking, anyway :)

Oh--cool feature I haven't used yet . . . the "no iron" dryer setting! Yes! I REALLY hope it works, because I REALLY am not great at ironing . . .

Will You be Mine, Valentine?

Our kids really like Valentine's Day! I don't decorate for many occasions any more, but Valentine's Day is easy--put up the banner, attach the pink swirly things throughout the house, and boom! Decorated! :)

Morning surprises! From Grandma Judi, from us to them, and Valentines from them to us too :)

Brennen made Lego-mini mom and dad, so cute! Graysen built and painted the picture frame behind *us.* He started the project at that home show we went to last week and finished at our actual home. Pretty sweet!

Buck left after breakfast for work. Graysen questioned everyone in the house to help him remember exactly what dad put on that morning. He ended up dressing the same for our visit to the eye doctor :) All six of us--Valentine's Day eye appointments, whoohoo! Four are good to go, mine stayed the same (what?) and Gabby's got worse. There are three pairs of glasses on the way. Buck and his mini-me got plenty of smiles as we walked around the building. I love that G's still *little* enough to enjoy thinking up and doing special things like this!

It turns out that work was pretty slow on the day of love :) Buck was able to get off really early--so early in fact, that I didn't get a chance to finish his gift. He asked for a digital picture frame to take to work, so I got him one, but had no idea that it could hold so many pictures--I'm at over 1,000 and that's only half full! Every year from 2004-2016 took me an hour to load. So my 30 minutes between arriving home with groceries and finding out he was on his way with Jimmy John's (our Valentine's Day meal ;)--not enough time! But I gave him the frame anyway, and he gave me this cute *I love you necklace.* Jojo wears one frequently on the Fixer Upper show, and I mentioned it was cute while we were watching one night. Now I have one of my own :) In fact, we watched Fixer Upper for our Valentine night date--with my candle, purchased in Waco at Magnolia Market making the downstairs smell delightful (a rare occurrence with all these animals running around :)

Our Valentine's Day extended til the next, as a package from Maga arrived. This picture was taken shortly before G$ opened his second heart ("Wow, that's a lot of chocolate?!") to find . . .

Didi!! It's been gone since we went to visit Buck when he was working and staying at my parents' house this summer--seven months? He's slept with this tiny blanket every night for 8 years. Somehow it got stuffed between the couch cushions at Maga's! Hooray, reunited! I took a video, I'll see if I can get it to load :)

Happy Kid!

Hamster Invasion!

Buck and the kids started working on this Fort (a gift from Pam's homeschool supplies) waaaay back at the beginning of the school year . . . or was it this summer? Anyway, it's been a long time. This week, Graysen spotted the unfinished product on the high shelf in the classroom closet. He reached it down, finished it off, and set the hamster loose :) It is really funny to see the little fur ball twist through the teepees and sit on top of the armory. He's hard to get a picture of, but I thought I'd include the photo finish of the fort with this unique hamster flash of fur.

Peek-a-boo . . . the hamster sees you!

Surprisingly sturdy :)